


Gravely, Delicately

by OctaviaPeverell



Series: Gravely, Delicately [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Marriage of Convenience, R plus L equals J, The North Secedes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 04:36:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4046224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OctaviaPeverell/pseuds/OctaviaPeverell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa hums in false cheer but her words are anything but warm. “Do you know what happened to the last Snow who was legitimised?”</p><p><i>He died.</i> </p><p>A dragon has come to Westeros but the North have only one Queen and Jon must choose his fate in the midst of a long winter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gravely, Delicately

**Author's Note:**

> Though I hated last week's episode for what it did to Sansa, I ended up overthinking one day at work and this happened. I wanted to write a very dark Sansa - a Sansa who's become a little mercenary because of _everything_ that's been done to her by the Lannisters, Petyr and the Boltons. But also a Sansa whose loyalty and love of the North has only increased with every hurt and she can't stand the thought of letting anyone, especially someone she sees as just another conqueror, _ruling_ it, even from far away. I suppose I wanted to write a Sansa who's been embittered and made harsh about a year or so later as a result of 'that' episode, and this is the result.

Jon knows Sansa, as Wardeness of the North - _Queen,_ as many Northerners are still fond of whispering, especially in the vicinity of Dragons and other Southron families - is obliged to come for the ceremony. His aunt was particularly insistent on it, though Jon suspects that it has more to do with proving a rather sharp point to the North; that one of theirs is now one of hers and would have legitimate power of them.

To do it in front of Sansa only seems to make ties with the cold lords even more fragile than before - it’s seen as an insult and Dany doesn’t seem to be able to understand that, unfamiliar as she is with the web of politics of Westeros.

After the ceremony he stands a little heavier than before, the weight of the smaller, thinner crown like a lead circlet on his brow. He hates it already and wishes he never stood before Drogon, unable to feel the flames that burned away his clothes but nothing else. He _should_ have died that day.

But had he not then perhaps he would never have taken Winterfell back from the Boltons, would never have created enough of a ruckus for Sansa to push that thrice damned Ramsay Snow from the top of the tower just in time for Drogon to swoop by so that it was only his charred remains that hit the ground that day.

Jon remembers seeing Sansa standing in the window, the same window Bran was shoved from, and seeing her eyes, dead and cold even in the face of a fire-breathing beast, her hair flying behind her a hotter flame than any dragon.

She had not smiled that day or any day that he had seen her since.

Now, though, seeing her walk through the crowd of flittery lords and ladies, standing tall and straight-backed, he wishes there is anything on her face save for the polite, carefully constructed not-smile that graces her lips. Many part before her, keeping their distance but the Northern men and women watch her carefully through the corners of their eyes, as if they’re waiting for something and suddenly Jon doesn’t want to know what it is.

“Jon,” she greets, curtseying graciously, and from somewhere behind him he knows Dany has heard the lack of ‘your grace’ and is likely taking offence to it.

“Please, Sansa,” he murmurs, angling his body to shield her from those violet eyes. “You of all people don’t have to.”

She watches him with that enigmatic smile placed firmly on her lips, but something shifts behind her eyes, something speculative and curious before it’s gone again, leaving cold glass and two penetrative pinpricks of black. She takes his arm before it’s offered and they take a turn around the room, Jon painfully aware of all the eyes on him. On them.

“So,” she begins. “You’re no longer a bastard.”

The words make his blood freeze but he keeps going.

“But you’re not a Stark either, so I suppose you haven’t quite got all you wanted.” She’s trying to sound reasonable but every word is a dagger to his chest. Because yes, all he ever wanted was to be a Wolf, never some foreign creature from far away fantasy. He wonders if she’s trying to hurt him, and maybe a part of him revels in it.

“Yes,” he breathes. “But I will always be a Snow.”

Her smile spreads and it’s dangerous and dark; things she never should be.

“Yes. Snows will always be Snows.”

The words say nothing and everything at the same time. He hears the stories of Ramsay Snow, of the night of Sansa’s wedding and every night since, and the way her tears echoed around Winterfell until one day they just stopped. People had thought she’d died, that he’d finally killed her. For weeks no one saw anything of her until one day her lord husband had practically dragged her from her room, beaten, bloody and near unrecognisable. But her eyes were dry in the face of Ramsay Snow’s rising fury. She would not give him her tears, they all whispered. No more.

“What a lie it is to be _legitimised,_ ” he says bitterly, more to himself. Targaryen; the name is strange and clumsy on his tongue and he feels nothing like the graceful ruler his aunt is. He doesn’t know how to act around her but already there are murmurs from the council egging her to be a true Targaryen and take her nephew, a Northerner, as her husband. He had wanted to laugh when Sam told him the rumours, knowing in his heart that it isn’t his mother’s blood where their loyalty lies.

Sansa hums in false cheer but her words are anything but warm. “Do you know what happened to the last Snow who was legitimised?”

_He died._

She stops abruptly and her skirts twirl around her feet as she turns to look up at him, intimidating him even from a full head below.

“He married me.”

That throws all the thoughts from his mind and he stares at her, confused, disbelieving and in denial. Surely she can’t be thinking what he suspects. Surely she isn’t suggesting what he thinks she is.

“Bastards can rise high in the world, he told me. But here, Jon? Nothing good will happen to you here. You’ll be a prince in name. You will never have the loyalty of men like you did as Lord Commander. You will never be what you were at the Wall.”

He swallows thickly. “The Wall was no honourable battle, Sansa. People died there.”

Though her expression remains the same, her whisper is low and harsh. “Do you think I’m stupid, Jon?”

Before he can open his mouth to apologise though, she is speaking again, softer, _enticing,_ like liquid gold that he could drown in. The flitting of her emotions make him dizzy and yet she knows how to allure.

“I’m not talking about glory or war, Jon. I’m talking about you sitting and looking pretty here, while you aunt uses you as a pathetic guarantee for Stark loyalty. Surely you know we kneel to no one. Not anymore.”

How like a wildling she sounds, and yet Ygritte had never been this frosty, and his ears burn with humiliation and anger.

“I won’t be marrying my _aunt,_ ” he tells her fiercely, gently pulling her by a stone pillar for more privacy but it is for nought in the crowd of the room.

Sansa smiles and it’s condescending and fond all at once.

“Of course you won’t. She can’t make you a _Stark._ ”

His throat closes around itself as he stares at her, unable to speak for the words are spinning as fast as he can think them but nothing can translate into speech.

“You’re only a Stark by the word of another Stark. You and I both know this.”

He does know this; he knows it so instinctively that all his long years of wishing for his father - his uncle - to declare him his son have come back to haunt him by the words of his eldest daughter. He’d thought the Wall had beaten that desire out of him and yet now…Gods, to be anything but a Targaryen.

But it’s too good to be true and not a second later he scowls, pushing his childhood dreams away. He’s the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch - or he was until Dany took that from him as well. He’d secretly thought her cruel for it but now, looking at Sansa, he thinks she’s crueller.

“So you mean to make me a Northern puppet instead of a Southron one, Sansa?” he asks with a derisive laugh. “So I’ll sit on a throne that’s going to freeze my arse while you rule? I do not think so, _cousin._ You were once my half- _sister._ ”

Her lip curls a little in disgust. “Always so dramatic. At least we will know each other and never betray one another. And besides.” She raises her head proudly. “I don’t want you to help me rule the North.” Her eyes go brighter and fiercer still. “I want you to help me _build_ it.”

That gives him pause.

“Build it?”

She nods once.

“From The Neck to The Wall. Beyond, if you like, though you’ll have to manage all that yourself. Come back with me…and you’ll never have to see the South again. It’s a shit place, anyway.”

He almost laughs in surprise at the sound of her swearing, but it’s the fact that there’s a hint of a true smile in her eyes that makes his heart skip a beat. He’d forgotten what her smile was like. And this is only a shadow of happiness, a barely-there insight into something sweet and bright that’s buried deep inside her and suddenly he wishes to dig it out, to carve away at ice that is thicker than that which built The Wall. He wants to pull her back out; the last link he has to a home he still yearns for.

“We’re in the middle of a very long winter, Jon, and we’re going to survive it. These wilting flowers never will and frankly I don’t _care._ I have a country larger than all the six kingdoms to protect.” 

She gazes up at him through heavy lids, her lips parted in a way that makes him stare at them. 

“Help me re-build our home, Jon. Let your aunt prove herself a queen here,” she says, almost pleading in the softest, most earnest of voices. But all too soon it’s gone and she’s pulling back, her face going hard. “Marrying a cousin should be _Targaryen_ enough for her.”

He frowns. “You don’t like her?”

 _Everyone_ seems to like Daenerys; everyone from the south, that is. They fawn and simper and perhaps some of them are even true, but his people remain cold and distant, untrusting and sneering at her too-many names, and rolling their eyes. She’s a beautiful woman, one who commands armies and raises spirits and hopes. But she’s also wildly uneducated in the history of their land, unforgiving of those she deems traitors to the House Targaryen, and when Jon tries to tell her that she’ll only make enemies like that, she throws the name ‘Stark’ at him like it’s an insult. 

Sansa shrugs lightly, her eyes old and seeing history upon history. “She’s just another queen. We’ve had so many in the last seven years. All of them wanted power or wanted to rule. _Your_ queen wants a dynasty,” she smirks, as if amused. “She wants the Targaryen name renewed first and foremost, regardless of all her talk of peace and a new era. It’s her right, she says.” Gazing at a point over his shoulder, Sansa laughs. “Every man or woman with a powerful name always seems to think they have a right to something. If that right is so absolute, I see no reason to keep mentioning it. She doesn’t even _know_ Westeros.”

It’s cruel and shockingly unkind of Sansa, who would never have said anything like that before; the hidden derision and distaste of another human evident in her patronising voice, even if all her face shows is polite disinterest. Jon suspects there’s more to it than that; that Sansa has an active reason to dislike Dany. It’s funny, he thinks, pondering on how, had things been different, Sansa might actually have taken a strong liking to Dany for her forcefulness as well as her gentleness. 

But perhaps she has a point; Daenerys wants things that he does not care about enough to stay. She wants the Targaryens to rule once more, she wants the seven kingdoms to unite in her name once more. She wants the powerful humbled and the downtrodden risen up. She wants prosperity and joy to be ever flowing in her new world but all those things matter little to Jon if he cannot offer himself to renew the lands he was born into.

Once a Snow, always a Snow. 

He belongs to the North. 

“What do you need me to do?” he asks, resolving himself to do whatever it takes to leave the responsibilities – or lack thereof – of being some useless prince. 

She smiles, sharp and indescribable, and he feels like he’s just fallen prey to something delicately soft but gravely beautiful. Her fingers hold his, not like a cage but like a beguiling promise. 

“Marry me. Be my husband and I will be your wife. Come back to Winterfell with me.”

“And live like Targaryens?” he can’t help but ask, though he knows what his answer will be. 

“No, Jon. We’ll live like Starks. With all that entails.”

A flash of silver hair and scrutinising violet eyes make him grimace and he crowds closer to hide Sansa’s face, but Sansa seems to take it differently so she moves closer to him still, her honey wine-scented breath warm against his chin as she moves up onto her toes and strokes runs her fingers across his jaw. 

_Everyone_ sees it, he knows, and he feels the cold lords and ladies relax their stances as if they’ve accomplished something long-coming. The murmurs of the others increase into a susurrus of the summer insects and the gushing of a heavy brook after the rain. 

“They’re talking about us,” he says with realisation and Sansa presses her lips together into a self-satisfied smile. 

“They’ll be talking about us for a long time. They’ll say that once again a Targaryen prince risks war over a Stark lady. But this time there will be no war; the realm cannot afford it.” She rises higher and Jon inhales sharply when she kisses his chin, her lips brushing across his beard but it feels like the hottest and coldest brand has just been pressed into his skin. “This time we are in control.”

Daenerys is openly glaring at them from across the room, her chest heaving with rage and insult and, quite possibly, hurt. He feels a pang of guilt because he knows that she is very much alone in this and perhaps she had thought that _finally,_ she was no longer the only Targaryen in the world. But as of this moment Sansa is the only true Stark and there must always be a Stark in Winterfell. Jon will see that it is done.

Dany will rule as she always has done; by learning and trusting herself and those closest to her. Perhaps she will marry a lord of a great Southron house. The Tyrells, perhaps. But she will not marry him. 

Jon is going home.

“I will marry you, Sansa,” he tells her in a low voice, and Sansa’s pale blue eyes go wide with the thrill of her success. “I will be your husband and you shall be my wife. I will help you re-build the North.”

Her smile is dazzling and he sees in her every bit the queen his people whisper of. Perhaps she will not be a great queen; perhaps she will not lead armies and fly dragons and conquer cities. But she will be a good queen; a kind queen, a woman who would see her homeland and her people restored. And he will be by her side to help her. 

“Good.” It is but a word, neatly spoken but filled with multitudes and deeply intimate. 

She lets him tuck a lock of hair behind her ear and her lashes flutter at the brief brush of his fingers against the side of her face. The heat that surges through his veins at the sight of it is blindsiding and for a moment he thinks it is reflected in the full-blown, near black of her eyes. He’s aware of the numerous guests now, who attempt to move towards them with feigned indifference, though their eyes are hungry for the next courtly rumour and their whispers are frantic and enthusiastic. 

“I must ask you, Jon,” she breathes, her lips parted tantalisingly before him. “Do you know what happened to the last husband who laid his hands on me?”

He kisses her knuckles but feels a chill go up his spine. 

_He died._

This time her smile is too wide and though frightening, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her look more magnificent. 

“I pushed him from a tower and I killed him.” He nods gravely, stroking her fingers with his thumbs. “The one before that plunged off a dragon and into the sea. And my betrothed before him was poisoned at his own wedding.” 

Yes, he thinks. Perhaps she is a Wolf Queen he can follow and lead equally. 

“So you see, Jon. Everything depends on _you,_ now.”

She steps closer to him still, pressing herself against him and his body yields to hers as if they were made for one another. Everyone will see it now; how well they stand together, how Northern he looks and how kissed she is by fire.

“I will not hurt you, Sansa,” he promises solemnly so that it will not disgust her, yet sincerely so she will know his truth. 

This time she kisses his lips – the softest touch but it ravishes him inside out. 

“No you will not,” she murmurs against his mouth. “Because if you do, I will kill you.”

The minstrels sing of ice maidens and dragon boys that evening and Jon does not leave Sansa’s side once.


End file.
